I can see information behaving like that in nine years but I'm not sure if the current news organizations will have little to no role to play in it. Whats stopping the future New York Times from offering a subscription service for people to send and recieve information? Never underestimate the power of a corporation seeking money.

A interesting read for anyong wanting to preguess future outcomes is "The singularity is near : when humans transcend biology" Ray Kurzweil believes that upon aproahcing half of the century humans can choose to be immortal, link up with machines, and live more in a virtual reality then the material one. His scientific logic is heady so it's muggy going for me or anyone who is not familiar with basic element s of biology and computer science. Even so it's a valuable read and worth the headaches.

So far there is not mention of poltic or other social services affecting technological progress. I'm halfway through the book so maybe he gets into that thinking later.

Two things he is predicting in the near future i.e. 2010:

1: Computers will change is form. We will be more likely wearing electronics then having them sit at a desk......I think that's likely to happen but not commen place until about 2015 due to financial concerns.

2: the first phones that can interpet languages. .....Extremely likely I think. We already have computers capable of recognizing spoken words and web pages that can translate.

Celestial Dung wrote:1: Computers will change is form. We will be more likely wearing electronics then having them sit at a desk......I think that's likely to happen but not commen place until about 2015 due to financial concerns.

i think you're right about the wearable computing... but wrong on the timeframe. in 2006, we can buy this - and having seen, in person, two or three at work, they're as small as advertised.

1 gigabyte that's so small you can fit it in your pocket.

i don't recall actually posting this in goth geek, but i was able to install and run linux on a monster, 5 and a half pound notebook, with only 500mb of disk space..

i could easily see a personal computer being palm sized, at least, before 2010. i.e., with an optic feed to some sunglasses or something like that, seeing as they've already had an mp3 player / sunglasses combo for the last year or so..

2: the first phones that can interpet languages. .....Extremely likely I think. We already have computers capable of recognizing spoken words and web pages that can translate.

this is tougher, from a technical point. to see precisely why, i invite you to google text to speech technology (a third of the equation), then, google speech to text technology (the second third of the equation), finally, try playing with babelfish and google.... and see how it's lacking, seriously. (third part of the equation) ; making a computer comprehend the same language is tough enough; coding one to translate and pronounce correctly?

it will happen, i won't dispute that - we're closer than ever. but i'm guessing on a longer timeframe.

yes, i will freely admit that i could be wrong on this, but i don't believe so at this particular point in time. if someone makes an intuitive leap beyond what we can speculate now, obviously my predictions are for naught... but i wouldn't bet the farm on it.

anyway, regardless of my minor objections about timeline... i think you're correct in that they will become consumer technologies, and maybe even within our lifetimes.

as the old saying goes, only time will tell.

If carpenters made buildings the way programmers make programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy all of civilization.  Anonymous